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Thoughts on Dragon Age: The Veilguard
So, I recently played the game. I’ve been into Dragon Age since the first game, and my feelings about this one are… complicated. There are definitely elements I like about this game: the combat system was fine by me. Too many boss fights (I hate those with a passion), but otherwise, nothing to complain about. I’m not hugely into mechanics, so as long as a game is relatively playable without too much effort, I’m easy to please. A couple of locations were too dark, but game developers love darkness, so, whatever. The finale was definitely better than in Inquisition (but that might be because I don’t tend to buy DLCs and so I never got to play Inquisition’s ending) and I liked it, overall.
The main bulk of the story, though, is a different matter. I’m really not too happy with how most of the returning characters except Harding got treated – and honestly, the missives from the Inquisitor made me think there was a game there I’d rather be playing happening down south. What I did like was most of the companions and how their relationships unfolded. I adored Taash’s relationship with their mother. I was happy about some worldbuilding regarding the elves and dwarves, even. But what really wasn’t my thing was how shallow it all felt. It took me a while to pinpoint why, too.
First: something I really liked about Origins was that I got to play my origin story, and that they differed depending on who I chose. Those bits returning later really enriched the experience for me and made me connect with my Grey Warden. Likewise, I felt connected to Hawke because they had a family and the associated drama. In Inquisition, I already felt like my Inquisitor was just a faceless thing, and Veilguard just made that worse. Rook was just there, I guess. I played a Crow, but never really felt like that made much of a difference at all, beyond a couple of lines of additional dialogue.
Second: the scope was just too big. With Hawke, I think it the journey from zero to hero was done best. They didn’t start out trying to save the world. Even with Origins, the Grey Warden kind of stumbled into it. This was already a problem with Inquisition, but here it really stood out to me because the second quest already had me trying to save the world from a misguided god. That’s the kind of thing you need to work up to, even if it was just the prelude to the even bigger world saving plot that followed. I had a constant permanent feeling of being woefully inadequate to deal with world saving shenanigans on behalf of Rook because, well, they never earned it, or seemed to actually accumulate the power and experience needed.
Third: the factions and locations were incredibly neglected, I felt. You solve problems as a Crow and for the Crows by bashing people’s heads in like a thug instead of assassinating. But more than that, there was no ambiguity, the bad guys were Bad, and the good guys were Good. I missed choosing the lesser of two evil, negotiating court politics and winning over allies, making compromises. It was just… everyone wanted to help, I just had to solve everyone’s problems (= bash their enemies’ heads in) first. I was in Tevinter and didn’t even get to grapple with how complicated their society is. Why did the Lords of Fortune and the Mourn Guard even have to be there? The Veil Jumpers felt pointless and removed from any Elvish controversies despite their ostensible Elvishness. The Grey Wardens were the most interesting, but there wasn’t really enough time spent on their internal politics. First Warden bad, except when I talked him around, suddenly not. Each faction is nominally from its own kingdom/realm, but they’re more or less the only thing we see from that part of the world – as with a PC, giving them context helps ground them, and that context was sorely missing.
Thanks to those three points, it really felt like a fun way to pass time, but I had a hard time getting invested in the world and the role playing aspects of it. The companion quests were well done, but clearly at the expense of the wider world. There were too many factions, too many locations, to give any of them the depth they required. And it certainly didn’t help that unlike with Inquisition, I didn’t spent time amassing a solid power base by building a large faction of my own. It was just me and seven guys in a crumbling tower – which didn’t really give me the feeling that I was doing anything on the scope of saving the world from two mad gods.
The main bulk of the story, though, is a different matter. I’m really not too happy with how most of the returning characters except Harding got treated – and honestly, the missives from the Inquisitor made me think there was a game there I’d rather be playing happening down south. What I did like was most of the companions and how their relationships unfolded. I adored Taash’s relationship with their mother. I was happy about some worldbuilding regarding the elves and dwarves, even. But what really wasn’t my thing was how shallow it all felt. It took me a while to pinpoint why, too.
First: something I really liked about Origins was that I got to play my origin story, and that they differed depending on who I chose. Those bits returning later really enriched the experience for me and made me connect with my Grey Warden. Likewise, I felt connected to Hawke because they had a family and the associated drama. In Inquisition, I already felt like my Inquisitor was just a faceless thing, and Veilguard just made that worse. Rook was just there, I guess. I played a Crow, but never really felt like that made much of a difference at all, beyond a couple of lines of additional dialogue.
Second: the scope was just too big. With Hawke, I think it the journey from zero to hero was done best. They didn’t start out trying to save the world. Even with Origins, the Grey Warden kind of stumbled into it. This was already a problem with Inquisition, but here it really stood out to me because the second quest already had me trying to save the world from a misguided god. That’s the kind of thing you need to work up to, even if it was just the prelude to the even bigger world saving plot that followed. I had a constant permanent feeling of being woefully inadequate to deal with world saving shenanigans on behalf of Rook because, well, they never earned it, or seemed to actually accumulate the power and experience needed.
Third: the factions and locations were incredibly neglected, I felt. You solve problems as a Crow and for the Crows by bashing people’s heads in like a thug instead of assassinating. But more than that, there was no ambiguity, the bad guys were Bad, and the good guys were Good. I missed choosing the lesser of two evil, negotiating court politics and winning over allies, making compromises. It was just… everyone wanted to help, I just had to solve everyone’s problems (= bash their enemies’ heads in) first. I was in Tevinter and didn’t even get to grapple with how complicated their society is. Why did the Lords of Fortune and the Mourn Guard even have to be there? The Veil Jumpers felt pointless and removed from any Elvish controversies despite their ostensible Elvishness. The Grey Wardens were the most interesting, but there wasn’t really enough time spent on their internal politics. First Warden bad, except when I talked him around, suddenly not. Each faction is nominally from its own kingdom/realm, but they’re more or less the only thing we see from that part of the world – as with a PC, giving them context helps ground them, and that context was sorely missing.
Thanks to those three points, it really felt like a fun way to pass time, but I had a hard time getting invested in the world and the role playing aspects of it. The companion quests were well done, but clearly at the expense of the wider world. There were too many factions, too many locations, to give any of them the depth they required. And it certainly didn’t help that unlike with Inquisition, I didn’t spent time amassing a solid power base by building a large faction of my own. It was just me and seven guys in a crumbling tower – which didn’t really give me the feeling that I was doing anything on the scope of saving the world from two mad gods.